


Understanding Comes With Age

by navaan



Series: Age-Series [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst and Humor, Community: 10_hurt_comfort, Emotional, Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 03:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Journey's End the Doctor feels the need for cameraderie, but Jack has something to get off his chest...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding Comes With Age

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 10_hurt_comfort at lj  
>  **Prompt Used: Anger  
> **

“When it happened, I felt quite angry at you. I just couldn't understand how you could do this. After that horrible year and all that he had done to you - to the whole world...” The _us_ hang unspoken in the cold air between them. “All I could see was you crying over the dead body of a monster.”

The Doctor sucked in a breath. He and Jack were sitting on a bench behind the Pierhead building facing the Senned. The Tardis was standing on the Roald Dahl Plass refueling to her hearts content. They had never before talked about this, and the Doctor, usually someone to move on and never look back, wasn't sure if he wanted to discuss it now of all times. He had been traveling alone since Donna's memories had to be whipped, and he had come here hoping for some easy camaraderie. The Master and _The Year That Never Was_ were topics he would have liked to forget about altogether. It seemed all so far away now. No point to dwell on it, was there?

It wasn't hard to see, though, why Jack had reason to be angry at him. It wasn't only the Master – he had run from Jack on the game station, had left him without even telling him what had been done to him, without explanation for his mmortality. And their reunion hadn't been overly enthusiastic either. In the long run it had turned out less than lucky for Jack...

He was still mulling over what to tell Jack, when the man started talking again. “When we last met we didn't really have time to talk or catch-up. And we didn't even take time to properly say farewell afterwards. It was just so much goign on. So much had happened and with so many of your old companions and friends in one place - there was just not enough time to talk. Maybe it was just too much for all of us. I never even properly talked to Rose. I can't really forgive myself for that. I will never see her again now, and I didn't even take the time to properly tell her how thankful I am for all that she has done. How much I love her, how much I miss her and how much she has done for me – in so many ways. I would never have traveled with you in the first place if she hadn't been there, right?”

The Doctor gave a strained smile. “I suppose so. I don't think the person I was then would have taken a former time agent and proven conman of all people along for the ride. If she hadn't asked about your fate... I don't know what I would have done. I was broken then. She healed me in a way I didn't think possible. And she made me see that you had already started to change for _us_. That is why I allowed you to stay.” It was true. He could see the hurt in Jack's eyes at the revelation.

They sat in silence for moment, thinking of the young girl that had made them connect.

Nostalgia. It made his skin crawl. He wanted to get away. Run away from this talk. But didn't he owe this to Jack? The chance to overcome the hard feelings by getting them out of his system? He had caused so much hurt. He could give him that at least.

Jack turned to take a good look at him, then nodded to himself. “Anyway. I didn't understand how you could want to forgive him after all that he had done, and how you could want to help him so badly after he had treated you and the world so horribly. I just saw a mad megalomaniac. Someone who destroyed everything he touched and laughed at it afterwards.”

The Doctor nodded. He had seen the looks that Martha's family had given him, had seen Jack watching him without comprehension while he cried over the Masters dead body. It still hurt. The only other survivor of his kind, someone he had known from his earliest days onwards, who had turned against him - or had they turned against each other? - and had brought so much pain to the universe and so many, many people. He was sure that he could have helped him if only the Master would have seen how everything was changed now, that all they had was each other. The Doctor had made a point of not thinking about it since then. Now that he was reminded of it, he felt the loss so keenly that he nearly doubled over in pain.

He had felt angry then, too. Nobody had thought about _his_ feelings. They had wanted him to be the perfect savior, but nobody had wanted to understand what was really going on - or what the death of the Master really meant for _him_. It was so much easier to blame him for crying over a dead monster.

Jack was watching him with his very own thoughtful expression, and then gave him a sad smile. “I'm sorry. You do not want to talk about it. It still hurts, doesn't it? I didn't want this to hurt you. I just...” Jack took a deep breath, obviously trying to get his thoughts in order. “I understand now. I couldn't understand it _then_ , but I understand _now_. I understand how you could forgive him, and how deeply you were moved to help him. I do not presume to know how much history there was between the two of you. But he was the last of your kind, and you just wanted to save him. Like family. No matter what they have done, they are still worth saving.”

That wasn't what the Doctor had expected Jack to say. It came so close to the truth that he had to look up, right at his former companion. Since this conversation had started, he had been so intend on finding a way out of it that he hadn't really paid attention to Jack. He hadn't properly looked at his friend. He should have taken the time, really...

“Jack?” Jack turned again to look at him. A little sad, but calm. “What happened? What brought this on?” Since this had started the Doctor had feared that this would be one of these occasion where one of the humans, he was normally so fond of, wanted to get him to “spill his guts”, to relieve perceived emotional stress. But now that he took the time to fight down the unpleasant feeling and concentrate on the man before him, he figured this was more about _Jack_ relieving some emotional stress.

The Captain folded is hands in his lap and looked at them intently, as if he was searching for something. “I just wanted to talk to someone who would understand. And I wanted to apologize for not being understanding on the Valiant. But seeing you with him hurt in so many ways... I just couldn't think clearly. I couldn't see how much his death must have cost you. _But now I know_.”

“Jack. I know how it is. I didn't expect anyone to understand then. Not really. Not after that horrible year. I'm not seeking understanding in humans. How could I ever _want_ to make someone empathize with the pain of being the last of your own kind? But this is not the point is it? This is not about me, but about you, is it? So, whatever happened to _you_?”

Jack looked him right in the eye. His bright blue eyes narrowed. His voice was dead serious when he said: “Oh Doctor, this is about you. Of course, it is. But you never see that, right? It's _always_ about you.”

The Doctor felt his gut knot up again. But before he could say anything Jack cut him off: “Just before the Planet was snatched away by Daleks my team lost two of it's members. And it is my fault. But it could have been so much worse. Because someone from my past caught up with me. My brother Gray, whom I had lost when we were children... It's a long story. I told you I grew up on the Boeshane Peninsula. We were a happy family. My parents, my younger brother and me. Until the day we were attacked and I let go of the hand of my little brother. I lost both him and my father on the same day. My father was dead, but there was never a body of Gray. I didn't stop searching for years. I think I set out to become a soldier and a time agent because of that.”

The Doctor didn't know what to say. He was normally the one to talk his head off, but never about personal history. Jack went on: “Whatever... Doesn't matter now. I didn't find him, but now I know that he was alive, grew up as a prisoner of war, was constantly tortured . You get the picture.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Oh it gets better, Doc. He goes crazy, psychotic megalomaniac, uses another time agent to find me and decides to destroy my _perfect life_ here on earth, starting with destroying the city, with not the slightest care if the planet gets blown up in the process. And I am transported back in time to be punished for my immortality... Burried alive." Jack broke off and the Doctor was starring at him, shocked into silence.

He'd had that strange feeling, once when they had battled the Slitheen, that something wrong was in this city and now he knew it had been Jack. But he had even felt it once before that... Once. A glimmer of something strangely wrong - when he and Rose had been... "He kept you in Cardiff before 1869!?!"

Jack looked startled at his outburst. "How can you know that?" He sounded hurt and confused.

"Did he?! How long?" So he had been right. He stared at Jack wide eyed and so sorry for not realizing. But how could he have realized? He hadn't even known the _normal_ Jack then.

Jack just looked at him seriously, before he continued: "He transported me back to the year 27 - and I was buried until 1901."

"What?!" The Doctor was horrified. "You were buried all this time?"

"The gift of life was kind of wasted for a few years, you could say. It wasn't that bad. I was dead for most of the time."

"Few years? Not so bad? You must have died a thousand times or more and it was _not so bad_?!" the Doctor shrieked. "Rassilon, Jack. You were buried for more then one and a half millennia..." The Doctor shuddered to even thinking about it. He couldn't immagine to be stuck in one place for so long even under normal circumstances. But being buried, dying over and over again must have been a nightmare.

"Do you know how I felt on the Valiant now?" Jack asked in an vaguely amused tone.

The Doctor furrowed his brow. "You were the one dying on the Valiant over and over again, and it made me feel sick all the time! You may be a fact, Captain, but throwing your life away all the time and being so nonchalant about it..."

"Is wrong?"

"Yes!"

"But it is alright if you do it?"

"That's not what I said!"

Jack looked a bit less crestfallen, but his eyes were intently fixed on the Doctor beside him. "I really didn't want to argue. I wanted to thank you."

"What? What have I to do with this?" Was this about Jack's brother or about the Valiant? The Doctor had the feeling that he and Jack were not on the same page here.

"When I was found, I let myself be frozen. So there wouldn't be two of me running around Cardiff and I would be in the right place at the right time for once." He smiled. "I woke up and had the chance to confront my little brother again - right after he had reached Torchwood after burying me and I told that him I had already forgiven him."

The Time Lord mulled this over. "You are a very forgiving man then, Captain."

"As are you. Aren't you?"

"Am I?"

"You were. With the Master. You even were with me - after the Chulla ship disaster. You make yourself out to be hard and unforgiving, but you always show mercy until there is no other way, don't you?" He sighed. "You made me a better man. Lying in the soil, dying over and over again, I thought of you and all the things that I have seen you do. And that you had not hated the last of your kind - even though he was a crazy, killing bastard. Then I thought about how many years I had spent searching my brother. My sweet little brother, who I now knew must have gone through so much in the years after his abduction. I just couldn't get myself to hate him. But he had to be stopped."

The Doctor was thinking of the Valiant, heard himself reason with the Master, promised him help, but also imprisonment in the TARDIS. He took a deep breath. So many things would have been different if the Master had lived. At least he would have had the chance to finally figure out why brilliant, radiant Koshei had become the insane rogue he had been in the end. "The Master would never have taken imprisonment. I think he wanted Lucy to kill him. Maybe he had still a hold on her. Who knows?" He tried to shrug it off, but the Master had to often proven his genius. Maybe he still had a contingency plan that was working as they spoke... The Doctor had long ago learned that death was not necessarily an end to the Master's exploits. Although he had also never burnt his remains before. Maybe he just wanted the Master to find a way to cheat death once more, because having an enemy was better than being left behind alone?

He felt Jack watching him and asked: "How did you stop you brother?"

"Oh, he is in there." He gestured in the general direction of the Hub. "Frozen. I couldn't bring myself to kill him, but I can also not see myself reforming him after all these years. If I figure something out, I might try. But how can I make Gwen and Ianto face the one who is responsible for the death of their colleagues. It's my problem and I will deal with it. When the time is right."

"You gave away another 100 years to wait for the right moment already."

"Being frozen wasn't so bad. It's like sleeping and waking up again. Blink of an eye. And without a working Vortex Manipulator and no Tardis, what would you have done?"

"I for one, would not have survived being buried without air," the Doctor reminded him. He would have regenerated until his remaining regenerations had run out. "I could probably have postponed my death through healing comas and shutting down most of my body's functions. But even then I wouldn't have been around all these years till 1901..." At least he didn't think so. How had Jack been found in the first place? Then it occurred to him what he had just said and what that implicated. "Oi! Hang on! You're older than I am!"

Jack laughed out loud in surprise. "Yeah? Am I? If you say so. Does that make me someone, who can order you around now, Doctor sir?" He leaned forward conspiratorially: "You wouldn't by any chance prefer older men, would you?"

The eyes of the Time Lord didn't give anything away, but he watched Jacks intentionally sexy grin and the way his eyes shone with a more familiar kind of gleam. "Well. How would I know? Nearly all the older men I knew where stuffy, traditionalist Time Lords with no interest in anything but stagnation. Aside from that there are not too many older men around, right?"

Hearing that Jack gave a low chuckle. "I suppose that is right. Now at least. But you mus have been younger at one time. Let me guess, you were too young then by Time Lord standards to be interested in anyone?" The Doctor felt a pang at that, thinking of his years before escaping from the oppressive society of Gallifrey: His House, his family, the Academy and friends.

"Ever been kissed by an older man?" Jack asked in a sultry voice.

The Doctor gave a suffering sigh. "You know, for a moment I really thought that all these years must have helped you growing up? But, no. You have to turn everything into innuendo of the worst kind. At least I know you have not been damaged by all these traumatic experiences."

"Please. As if you ever grow up, Doctor. And I have you know that I take my chances when they present themselves. How about we date for sometime and you find out if you like it? Like an scientific experiment. Broadening your horizon." He jumped up and held a hand out to the Doctor. "Let's start now."

"Nah. I think we shouldn't rush things. After all we both have time to spare." The Doctor jumped up without taking the offered hand and walked past the bench in the direction of the Plass. Jack was quick to follow him. He caught up and they walked side by side in companionable silence. When they neared the Water Tower they could both hear the satisfied hum of the Tardis and shared a happy smile.

The Doctor felt better now. He hadn't even known he was worried.

Jack would survive - for a long, long time. And the Captain would find ways to learn how to adapt to his immortality and how to deal with bad situations and their consequences.

He spotted one of Jacks employees near the Millennium Center - the guy in the suit - watching them interestedly. Jack had made himself a home here and he had the time to stay for a while before he started to live between the stars again. It was nice to know that the Doctor could always come and find him if he wanted to. At least one of his companions would never be lost. "Thank you, Captain." The Doctor said, stopping in the middle of the Plass a few meters away from his ship. He smiled, giving a mock salute. "It was quite the stop over, but I think I will move on now. You know me. I can't stay put for too long."

"You could stay a while longer if you really wanted to."

"You could come with me for a while if _you_ really wanted to."

They smiled at each other. "Not at the moment then?" Jack asked.

"Nah. Maybe, when I'm as old as you are, I'll want to settle down."

"Unlikely."

"Yah, well... not likely at least." He looked over Jack's shoulder at the young man watching them. "I think your team mates want you back now." Jack turned to look and gave a nod to his employee.

Turning, he looked at the Doctor again. "All right then. Don't get yourself into trouble and don't just vanish forever. Thank you for listening to my ranting..."

The Doctor interrupted a longer apology. "No, _thank you_. Thank you for finally understanding. It's nice that at least one of you can see the root of my actions."

Jack was stunned into silence. Then he impulsively pulled the Time Lord into a crushing hug. "I'm sorry for everything," he whispered in his ear. The Doctor extracted himself from the strong grip, patted Jack on the arm.

"Don't be emotional now. It's unbecoming in one so old."

"Very funny." Jack took a step back. His face was straight, but his eyes were shining with amusement.

The Doctor just waved at him and turned to the Tardis. Opening the door, he heard Jack calling out: "If you ever have to face something like that again, give me a call."

He just nodded, already half inside the sanctuary of his ship.

Before the door closed he heard Jack call: "And if you ever want to find out about older men - don't even think about calling anyone else."

Sometimes talking did help with the healing process, but banter was just so much more comfortable. The Doctor gave a happy chuckle, shaking his head and jumped up the walkway to the console - to set new coordinates and leave Cardiff behind. At least for now...


End file.
